1 stud and 2 duds for Cavs in loss to Raptors on Thursday

Cavs stud from this L to the Raps: Darius Garland

The Cavs had anything but their best performance in this one, as the Wine and Gold had too many lulls offensively, and while they didn’t have a ton of turnovers, necessarily with 13, some of those were killers for momentum. Toronto had 18 fastbreak points, to Cleveland’s four. Of those 13 turnovers, Darius Garland had four of them.

That said, although Garland didn’t have nearly the splits in this one that he’s been having of late, which have been otherworldly, he did still have 18 points and 10 assists for Cleveland in this outing. And unfortunately for the Cavs, there were a number of dishes from him to shooters that created wide open looks that the Cavaliers simply didn’t hit.

I credit the Raptors defense for creating some key live-ball turnovers at times on Garland (and Garland just went 7-of-18 overall), and others, such as Caris LeVert, but objectively, the Wine and Gold just seemingly could not hit some open looks nearly enough to really generate runs.

Cleveland did hit 40.0 percent from three in the game, however, Lauri Markkanen going 2-of-6 from there, and Cedi Osman going 0-of-3 from was less than ideal.

Realistically, the Cavaliers regularly can’t rely on Lamar Stevens, LeVert and Evan Mobley to go 2-of-3, 3-of-4 and 2-of-3 from three-point land game-to-game. Props to them for hitting those; it’s just tough that it was in a 13-point loss.

But circling back to Garland, he was still generating a bunch of quality looks for other Cavs, which was nice to see, and while the shots for him from deep didn’t go, his playmaking was still impactful. That’s also part of why him being a minus-17 here is somewhat misleading, as he was the only player consistently generating quality ball-swings.